Football Rating Systems
Rating Systems for Football Matches
Published April 11, 2014
I imported English and Scottish league results from Football Data and ran some basic rating systems against the data.
The rating methods are based on articles found online and are not meant as a sophisticated method for picking winners or making a profit in the long term. They are a starting point for analysis.
Basic Football Rating Systems
I looked at three match rating methods: an Elo rating system, goals superiority, and a basic win-draw-loss points method. These are related to wider topics such as true odds, value, goal expectancy, and Poisson distribution.
Win, Draw, Loss Rating
The basic rating takes the last six league results for each team and totals the points gained: win equals three points, draw equals one point, and loss equals zero points. The match rating is the home team points total minus the away team points total.
Goal Superiority Rating
Goal superiority also looks at the last six league games. A team rating is calculated from goals scored minus goals conceded, then the home team rating is compared with the away team rating.
Elo Rating System
The Elo rating method is more involved. It rates teams relative to one another and updates those ratings after each league game. I felt it was more accurate than the other two basic methods for predicting match outcomes.